


Alone, a Journey

by tiniestdormouse



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5616898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiniestdormouse/pseuds/tiniestdormouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You move beyond for the chance at changing everything. AU.</p><p>Originally written for the PH Fanfest.<br/> </p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone, a Journey

 

You come to the bridge that leads to everywhere. Mist curls around the wooden, sunken boards, yet it bears your weight. The railings, moss-covered are strangely dry and crumbly to the touch. This bridge, you were told, has existed forever, and since you are here and you are one, your time is limited.

There were many obstacles you overcame to arrive here. A ship full of men entreated you on their journey for the fleece of gold and you triumphed in bewitching the sorceress who safeguarded the lost lamb. Their boon was the key to your escape; a ball of glittering yarn had unspooled in your hands as you wandered through the labyrinth, hearing the bellows of monster-headed beasts in pursuit. Emerging from that dark, twisted maze, a sphinx appears and gave to the riddles you answered (in her grief over your triumph, she fell from the cliffs and died).

Beyond those cliff was a endless desert that took you forty days and forty nights to cross; during the heat, demons tempted you to drink the sand and at night, ghosts slipped into your mind and plagued you with delusions of home. You saw a two-headed eagle lift a serpent from the ground and followed it to an oasis— that is how you survived.

Desert gave way to grasslands where woolly mammoths roamed and bands of giants hunted them for food. You slept in the graveyard of bones left over from their festivals of meat and inhaled the scent of smoked jerky and blood. There, nestled inside the skull larger than a carriage-house, the cavern was exactly where the map said it’d be, and you made candles out of rotting fur and animal fat to light your way down. Hieroglyphics covered the walls and drawings of many-tentacled creatures sent shivers down your spine, but you kept going.

The walls shifted left and twisted upside-down and you walked on ceilings for days, touching stalactites to mark where you had passed, feeling slippery calcium deposits beneath your fingertips. You walked down, down, down, until an unbearable light seared your vision— that was the sun from another world and you were nearly there.

After the light passed, everything became devoid of color. Sound became stale, taste faded, and again, you questioned whether this journey was worth it at all as energy sapped from your being. You wanted to lie among the marsh-reeds and sleep forever. But she promised to be there, by the bridge, and you promised to meet her (and you never break your promises).

The road became covered in ash and crumbled beneath your feet. The trail clouds of dust until you notice shards of bone lodged in your boots; you jump and shake out all of the dust that had accumulated upon your body, grit your teeth and move on.

The bridge that leads to everywhere was a children’s story you heard in your youth, told by your best friend. The most determined people who want to change the world venture out to find that bridge. Those who cross it can have the power to change time itself. You always scared easily as a child, and you hated this story when your best friend told you, because of the horrors that were upon that road. But, you always reassured yourself, these creatures and places did not exist, and took comfort in that.

This you believed until the day you saw your friend disappear, taken by the Unseelie Court, and you then spent the next ten years traveling these fairy roads in order to get him back.

The boards to the bridge creak as you cross them, and the crone in her robes waits for you. She knows your name, and when she speaks it, the words sound like twigs breaking.

“Gilbert Nightray.”

The crone has a face of a thousand folds and when she smiles she has no teeth. “You promised a trade.”

You can only nod, and clench your fists by your sides. You spent the last decade preparing for this moment but even now, you are afraid.

“A decade he lost to the human world. A decade in our world, you are willing to spend here in his place.” A pause. “You are aware of the difference?”

You do, but you don’t care. You want Oz to live a full life among his friends and family (who had been so terribly worried for him) and be happy, to return to the warm sunlit reality that you had abandoned long ago. Perhaps, one day, as you take the crone’s withered hand and feel the lightness enter your being, you know you will emerge out of this fairy world and find everything has changed. Fairy time never equals human time after all. You peer through the veneer of the cosmos, and there he is, there is Oz, and you smile and you know it is all worth it.


End file.
